Friday, February 08, 2013

Israeli company develops blood test for Alzheimer's

This hits really close to home. So close, that if anyone out there reading this knows how I can get this blood test, please email me (email address on the right side of the page). My father HK"M and grandfather z"l both had Alzheimer's. Now, an Israeli company has developed a simple blood test to detect it early when it can still be treated.

“Today one of the main weaknesses in the Alzheimer’s area is that
patients don’t find out until it’s too late,” says Ilya Budik, CEO of NeuroQuest, an Israeli company developing a novel blood test for early detection of the most common cause of dementia worldwide.

“There are many new therapies under development, and the most
successful trials are showing the earlier a patient is treated, the
better likelihood of responding to the treatment,” he says.
A portfolio company of the government-supported Misgav Venture
Accelerator in northern Israel, NeuroQuest recently received $500,000 in
a funding round led by the InterTech Group in South Carolina and the
Maryland/Israel Trendlines Fund.

This half a million dollars will enable NeuroQuest to progress
towards a validation clinical trial at four US medical centers, and to
establish a US development center, possibly alongside its South Carolina
partners.

Its first human trials in Israel showed NeuroQuest’s test — which is
based on 20 years of research by Prof. Michal Schwartz of the Weizmann
Institute of Science — to be 87 percent accurate with an 85% specificity
rate in detecting Alzheimer’s and ALS, two common neurodegenerative
diseases. With blood tests, Budik explains, anything over 70% is
considered medically significant.

“That gave us proof of concept for Prof. Schwartz’s discovery that
certain parts of the immune system are involved in protecting the
central nervous system and also in healing it from neurodegenerative
diseases or neural injury,” Budik tells ISRAEL21c.

2 Comments:

I wrote to the company last night asking the same thing for my wife. She has multi-generational issues with the same thing. I'll let you know if I get anywhere with them and what route to take. You do the same if you have any luck.

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About Me

I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com